Natasha Lomas
Writer
The Latest from Natasha Lomas
Call for social media adtech to be probed by UK competition watchdog
A British Conservative politician, who has called repeatedly for Mark Zuckerberg to come to parliament to answer questions about how Facebook fences fake news — only to be repeatedly rebuffed &#
Banksy’s rigged art frame was supposed to shred the whole thing
In the connected future will anyone truly own any thing? Banksy’s artworld shocker performance piece, earlier this month, when a canvas of his went under the hammer at Sothebys in London, sugge
UK health minister sets out tech-first vision for future care provision
The UK’s still fairly new in post minister for health, Matt Hancock, quickly made technology one of his stated priorities. And today he’s put more meat on the bones of his thinking, settin
Applied gets $2M to make hiring fairer — using algorithms, not AI
London-based startup Applied has bagged £1.5M (~$2M) in seed funding for a fresh, diversity-sensitive approach to recruitment that deconstructs and reworks the traditional CV-bound process, drawing o
Google tweaks Android licensing terms in Europe to allow Google app unbundling — for a fee
Google has announced changes to the licensing model for its Android mobile operating system in Europe, including introducing a fee for licensing some of its own brand apps, saying it’s doing
Facebook rolls out checks for UK political ads
Facebook has announced it rolled out a system of checks on political ads run on its platform in the UK which requires advertisers to verify their identity and location to try to make it harder for for
Gartner picks digital ethics and privacy as a strategic trend for 2019
Analyst Gartner, best known for crunching device marketshare data; charting technology hype cycles; and churning out predictive listicles of emergent capabilities at software’s cutting edge has
TravelPerk grabs $44M to take its pain-free SaaS for business travel global
Only six months ago Barcelona-based TravelPerk bagged a $21 million Series B, off the back of strong momentum for a software as a service platform designed to take a Slack-like chunk out of the admin
Saudi ally calls for Uber boycott over response to Khashoggi’s vanishing
Uber is facing calls for a boycott of its app in the Persian Gulf, a region that has poured billions of dollars of investment into the company’s ride-hailing business in recent years: Directly
A fictional Facebook Portal videochat with Mark Zuckerberg
TechCrunch: Hey Portal, dial Mark Portal: Do you mean Mark Zuckerberg? TC: Yes Portal: Dialling Mark… TC: Hi Mark! Nice choice of grey t-shirt. MZ: Uh, new phone who dis? — oh, hi, er, Tec
Pro-privacy search engine DuckDuckGo hits 30M daily searches, up 50% in a year
Some nice momentum for privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo which has just announced it’s hit 30 million daily searches a year after reaching 20M — a year-on-year increase of 50%. Hitt
Audit Facebook and overhaul competition law, say MEPs responding to breach scandals
After holding a series of hearings in the wake of the Facebook -Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal this summer, and attending a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg himself in May, the European Union par
Google’s smart home sell looks cluttered and incoherent
If any aliens or technology ingenues were trying to understand what on earth a ‘smart home’ is yesterday, via Google’s latest own-brand hardware launch event, they’d have come
Google files appeal against Europe’s $5BN antitrust fine for Android
Google has lodged its legal appeal against the European Commission’s €4.34 billion (~$5BN) antitrust ruling against its Android mobile OS, according to Reuters — the first step in a pr
GDPR has cut ad trackers in Europe but helped Google, study suggests
An analysis of the impact of Europe’s new data protection framework, GDPR, on the adtech industry suggests the regulation has reduced the numbers of ad trackers that websites are hooking into E
China’s fast-rising Bullet Messenger hit with copyright complaint
Bullet Messenger, a fast-rising Chinese messaging upstart that’s gunning to take on local behemoth, WeChat, has been pulled from the iOS App Store owing to what its owners couch as a copyright
UK Uber drivers to stage 24 hour strike over pay and conditions
A UK union that represents the interests of Uber drivers has called a 24 hour strike for tomorrow. Ride-hailing giant Uber may not be comfortable thinking of the people who do the driving on its platf
UK High Court blocks compensation suit against Google’s ‘Safari workaround’
An attempt to bring a class-action style litigation in the UK to claim up to £3BN in compensation from Google for ignoring iPhone user privacy settings has been blocked after the High Court judge rul
RankScience closes $1.8M seed — and now only wants to replace human SEO staff if you don’t have any
A couple of years ago YC-backed RankScience, which offers AI-enhanced SEO split-testing, put a few SEO experts’ noses out of joint when the fledgling startup brashly talked about replacing human
This is not fine
A UN report compiled by a coalition of international climate and policy experts has warned that “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” are required if gl